“It takes a village to raise a child,” is a popular saying in Africa. This proverb tries to explain, succinctly, how the all-round development of children requires the active involvement of all community members. Many African culture thrives on this idea: it is common for extended family to contribute money and send their brightest child to university, this child pays the favour forward by sponsoring the next qualified candidate. By design newer generations are more educated, skilled, and have access to more resources.

As the idea travels across the world, meeting different people and culture, it tends to change form. But its core principle remains intact.

In 1996, Hillary Rodham Clinton brought this long-held idea back into the parlours of Americans by titling her book “ It Takes A Village, And Other Lessons Children Teach Us.” As the then first lady, she used the idea to promote her social causes. The book went on to become a New York Best Seller with more than 450, 000 copies sold. At the core, the publication was a call to action, an hand-book that details how modern society should be governed. Because this concept only tasks a fragment of people’s income, irrespective of class, it received wide acceptance from citizens from all-walks-of-life.

A decade before Clinton, Paulo Coelho a best-selling Brazilian novelist published The Alchemist. In it he described how the combination of passion, determination and luck brings people their desires “… when you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.” An overly simplification of the idea, which tries to explain that in our world today the village raising the child doesn’t have to be his local community. With the internet, the world has become a global village. The help you need to grow can come from anyone anywhere.

In today’s world, the idea comes at us in form of crowd-sourcing: community led initiative for the greater good of man. Arguably the most popular of crowd-sourcing is open source software development. Mozilla and Android OS, with more than 2 billion users in the market, are being built this way.

Shodipo Ayomide moderating the session on working remotely from Nigeria at GDGLagos’ DevFest 2018.

When I had the opportunity to interview Developer Ayo, I wondered how such a young personality could have achieved so much. His eyes were burning with desire for success that I distinctly remember Paulo “… when you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.” The world has come together to help him achieve his goal and he his pay the favour forward.

Please tell us about yourself:
I advocate for developers at VanHack and founder fremer technologies. I love building technology, mentoring startups, and travelling.

How did you get into tech?
I started coding at age 11 in secondary school by building desktop apps in Java. The technology being built inspired me and I wanted to build something that would amaze my classmates. In the process of learning, I built Clash-Of-Heroes a game that everyone in the school wanted to play. It is available on Facebook.

What are you proud of?
I am proud of the impact the Nigerian tech community has had. In 2017, I joined the facebook developers circles in Lagos and less than a year later, the community became the largest facebook developers circles in the world with more than 13,000 developers.

I am proud teen developer, entrepreneur and founder.

If you were to start your career today, what would you do differently?
I will never forget my personal formula: Google + YouTube = Success. This has been my model to learn anything and has helped grow my skill sets. Also, I would have joined the tech community from day 1.

What do you do away from work?
I watch movies, read books, and listen to music.

What’s your favorite book?Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. It comes highly recommended as I have read it 4 times already.

What is your favorite company?
Techpoint.Africa is definitely my favorite company. I love the team, they treat each other as family.